Page 410 - The Handbook for Quality Management a Complete Guide to Operational Excellence

396 M a n a g e m e n t o f H u m a n R e s o u r c e s R e s o u r c e R e q u i r e m e n t s t o M a n a g e t h e Q u a l i t y F u n c t i o n 397

Project or task situations
• A specific project or assignment problem: for instance, delays,
quality problems, quantity problems, lack of follow-through on
commitments
• Absenteeism and/or tardiness
• Deficiency in effort or motivation
• Behavior that causes problems, for example, aggressiveness
• Training: opportunity or assignment
• When someone new joins your group or team
• Conflicts between employees or within groups
• Communication problems or breakdowns
• When your own supervisor makes you aware that one of your
employees has a problem

Forms of Coaching
Coaching can take on a variety of forms. The traditional form is, as
described above, a supervisor coaching a subordinate or a sponsor coach-
ing a team. However, other forms do occur on occasion and should prob-
ably occur more often than they do. A number of the more common
alternative forms of coaching are described here (Finnerty, 1996):

• Mentoring. Mentoring involves a relationship between a senior
manager and a less-experienced employee. The mentor is a trusted
friend as well as a source of feedback. Mentors provide employees
with information and feedback they may not otherwise receive. It
was stated earlier that coaches must be subject-matter experts in the
area they are coaching. Mentors are experts on the organization itself.
Because of their superi or knowledge of the written and unwritten
rules of the organization, the mentor can help the employee traverse
the often perplexing maze that must be negotiated to achieve
success. Knowledge of the organi zation’s informal leadership,
norms, values, and culture can usually only be acquired from either
a mentor, or by experience. “Experience is a stern school, ’tis a fool that
will learn in no other.”
• Peer coaching. Traditional, vertically structured organizations have
been the model for mentoring. Typically, the mentors or coaches
are above the employees in the organizational hierarchy and have
formal command authority over them. Peer coaching relationships
are those where all parties are approximately the same level within
the organization or, at least, where no party in the relationship has

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